


heaven and hell were words

by ShyAudacity



Series: Riverdale Prompt Fills [23]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Archie Andrews Needs a Hug, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e21 Chapter Thirty Four: Judgment Night, Episode: s02e21: Chapter Thirty Four: Killing of a Sacred Deer, Hurt Archie Andrews, Hurt Jughead Jones, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mentioned Penny Peabody, Movie Reference, Near Death Experiences, Night Terrors, Overstimulation, Post 2x21, Prompt Fill, Season/Series 02, Sensory Overload, Whump, i guess that works, ive seen it called both and im confused, thats not a tag? wow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 09:23:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14615181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyAudacity/pseuds/ShyAudacity
Summary: “I wish we could just go.”Jughead and Archie are squeezed together on the hospital bed, pressed shoulder to shoulder as close as they can be. Jughead has his IV free hand curled around Archie’s forearm; on top of the punctured lung and broken ribs, he’s got a concussion and more than forty stitches to fix the mess that Penny Peabody made of his upper arm.(There had been so much blood when they found him, caked into his hair, staining his skin. Archie can’t imagine how many towels the nurses must have gone through just to clean him up.)ORanon said: Is it possible for you to write a fic of Archie's reaction to what happened to jug at the end of 2x22? I understand if you can't. I'm still very emotional about the episode but I love my boys :)





	heaven and hell were words

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I used a bughead line. Fuckin fight me. 
> 
> Unbeta'd and title from Work Song by Hozier

When FP comes walking out of the woods with Jughead in his arms, it makes everything seem like a horror film; a Scream remake that no one ever wanted to see because it hit too close to home.

At first, all Archie can do is stare. Everything in him is screaming: _go. Go to him, you idiot. He needs you._

(Time stands still for upwards of an eternity, at least it feels that way. Archie is still trying to convince himself that this is real, that this isn’t actually just some drug-induced hallucination.)

FP’s legs quiver and Archie rushes forward, keeping them from hitting the ground. He gets an arm around Jughead’s back; Archie feels his heart stop as he watches the way Jughead’s neck lolls like a limp noodle. Somewhere above him, FP and Betty are trying to figure out- mostly arguing- over what to do next, how to get Jughead some help.

_I came here on my bike, there’s no way- I can’t get him there-_

_We brought Mr. Andrews truck- that’ll be faster than waiting around for an ambulance._

Archie tunes them out. He holds his shaking hand over Jughead’s bloody face, just hovering, too afraid to touch for fear of hurting him more. He’s unnervingly still- Jughead’s always been a spastic person at heart, could often be caught tapping his pen or shaking his knee under his desk. Archie thinks that might be why Jughead likes writing so much, it gives him something to do with his hands.

Jughead coughs, a rough, crackly sound erupting from his chest; Archie brushes back his hair, holds the back of his head.

 _You’re okay, it’s okay,_ he thinks, too shocked to speak for real.

Jughead coughs again, harsher this time, nearly rolls out of Archie’s hold from the force of it. He’s wheezing, Archie can hear it now, has a punctured lung, no doubt. He’d bet on everything he has that Jughead’s ribs are shattered. Archie feels like all of his nerve endings are on fire, everything that’s going on- it’s too much too fast, his brain can’t keep up with all the chaos.

“Arch,” FP says, his voice watery. “Kid, c’mon, get up. We gotta get Jug to the hospital.”

Archie helps FP take him to the car, cradles Jughead in the backseat while Betty and FP sit up front. He just keeps looking at Jughead face, wishing that it were different, that someone hadn’t done this to him, hadn’t hurt him this way. Archie tucks his face into his neck, eventually, as if it’s going to protect him somehow.

Once they get there, Archie has a hard time letting go, _literally_. It takes him a full three seconds to realize that the nurse had asked him to put Jughead _down_ onto the gurney so that they could take him away. He watches as some doctor- not the one that treated his father- takes Jughead into another room, rattling something off about blood pressure and intubating.

This, Archie decides, is the worst day, ever.

***

“I wish we could just go.”

Jughead and Archie are squeezed together on the hospital bed, pressed shoulder to shoulder as close as they can be. Jughead has his IV free hand curled around Archie’s forearm; on top of the punctured lung and broken ribs, he’s got a concussion and more than forty stitches to fix the mess that Penny Peabody made of his upper arm.

(There had been so much blood when they found him, caked into his hair, staining his skin. Archie can’t imagine how many towels the nurses must have gone through just to clean him up.)

Jughead had tugged him into the bed with him at some point in the night, Archie couldn’t bring himself to say no, or anything for that matter.

He’s mostly just been dozing the last two days, only sleeping for twenty minutes at a time. He keeps seeing Jughead’s bloody face when he closes his eyes. Or his dad getting shot again, but this time without the vest, just bleeding a mess onto the hardwood floors in his living room.

Now, somewhere around early to mid-afternoon, Jughead speaks up for the first time all day. His voice is still raspy from the tube they stuck down his throat, and Archie wishes that he had a response that would make them less afraid. He spews out the first thing that he can come up with.

“We will,” he promises. “We’ll get out of here someday… I’ll make sure of it.”

Archie dozes off again, gasps awake a few minutes later after both his Dad’s and Jughead’s corpses had blamed him for all of this.

Jughead moves his hand off Archie’s arm, uses it to tuck Archie’s face into his shoulder, saying: “Go to sleep, it’s not like I’m going anywhere any time soon.”

Archie would laugh if it didn’t hurt so much right now. He closes his eyes anyways, just glad that Jughead is still here.

And this time, when he dreams, no one dies. He imagines how fourth of July should have gone last year, sharing lazy kisses outside of the Andrews house, down by the river. He imagines how the stars would have looked, the way that Jughead would have held his hand, would have curled into him in the middle of the night. Archie dreams of the _I love you_ that he still has yet to say, how saying it in the midst of a crisis seems like a cop out, sounds too easy.

Archie dreams, and, for the first time in two days, nothing hurts. Given the circumstances, this is as much as he could think to ask for.  

**Author's Note:**

> So much happened in this episode and I still haven't recovered from it. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments/Kudos are encouraged and appreciated. If you wanna talk Riverdale you can find me on tumblr as archieandrewsprotectionsquad. Thanks again for reading my fic, have a great day!


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